“For Sure If You Are Not With Us You Can’t Do A Clown Show.”

Today’s exercise was to “make us believe you are an actor.” Monsieur Marcel has told us that “when an actor walks on the stage we think he is Apollo and when he speaks we hear the birds in Amazonia.”

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Connor and I had a go together. We were trying to find something funny imitating a god walking, but the audience never laughed and Philippe killed us quite quickly. “You have to change”, he said, to which I replied that we did, several times! Because we did. We tried many things. But Philippe explained himself and said it doesn’t mean do lots of things - it means come back from the moon and look at the audience the way I do when I’m being critiqued. I didn’t look at the audience like that when I was playing, but afterwards I did. It hit me on a deeper level today that being with the audience, looking at them, listening to them, playing with them, is the most important thing. 

“You go to another planet and hup! we are not here.”

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Philippe got Tessa to do ridiculously long strides, whilst being soft on her feet, and looking to the audience. After five big steps she had to stop, smile, and softly say “I am an actor.” And we loved her. “It’s not really complicated.” You have to think ‘With this walk I’m sure everyone will think I’m a brilliant actor.’ “If we don’t have this fantastic pleasure and this stupid walk it’s just a heavy idea.”

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“It is directly from the clown to the audience.”

“You have to be happy.”

“You can’t disagree [with us]!...We are the audience and we see better what you do than you!”

“If you are bad but we see a beautiful soul you are genius.”

It’s interesting: Do a bird cheep once and it is ridiculous. Do it five times and it’s normal.

“For sure if you are not with us you can’t do a clown show.”

“When people don’t do anything perhaps something is coming. But when people do so many things for sure nothing is coming.”

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Today’s class was pretty rough. Philippe was in a sour mood and there were no second chances. However he worked a bit with Liz right at the end of class. “Are you ready to explode?” 

She wanted to, but she was having trouble letting go. I egged her on by yelling “Come on Ms Landon!” (she’s a high school teacher) and that tipped her and she came out raging. She had a giant furious outburst at Philippe (he said she could say nasty things to him) and finally let go. She was alive and bright red and full of life. And very funny! He then got her to present the clown show like this and it was great. “This one could be your clown.”